by Jessica Kieras
German swimmer Anke Höhne has been doing marathon swims for at least ten years. She has completed the Triple Crown, Loch Ness, Straits of Gibraltar and others. But this year, she established two new routes in Germany, pending MSF ratification: The Schlei (an arm of the Baltic Sea) and the length of Lake Müritz (the largest lake within Germany’s borders). She’d previously completed the Lake Müritz route, but decided to repeat and document it this year.
While many swimmers do just one big marathon swim per season, Anke did four marathon swims in just four weeks. The other two swims were established events: Neuruppiner Langstreckenschwimmen (10k in a lake near Berlin) and Wakenitzman (14k in a former border river between East and West Germany near Lübeck).
In comparing established swims with her new, self-organized swim routes, she noted, “it’s a great feeling to be the first to swim a route. Organising a swim like this myself, together with my husband (who is on board for all my swims and does the feeding) and with friends, is always a bit of an adventure. But it also gives me more freedom in terms of scheduling the swim.”
Swimming the Schlei
The Schlei is a Fjord flowing into the Baltic Sea, with an average depth of four meters and brackish water. On the day of the swim, the water temperature was 20-22°C. Anke and her husband scouted the route in a boat a couple times in advance of the swim. They knew that the current would be one of the big unknowns in pioneering this swim route. So, they sought advice from the local boat-rental company, who helped them pick a good day for the swim. Her training and experience paid off when she powered through an unexpected counter-current for the first two hours of the swim. Luckily, her efforts were rewarded when the current changed to support the swim for the next ten hours.
Another challenge arose at nightfall, when her team found the very shallow water difficult to navigate through once it got dark. “They had to find the shipping buoys which show the navigation channel,” she wrote. “These shipping buoys were not illuminated at night. The shipping buoys were only reflected when they were illuminated with a lamp.” These are the types of situations that swim pioneers encounter that make being the first more difficult and often praise-worthy. She finished the approximately 33km swim in fifteen hours, meeting several surprise jellyfish near the finish, despite the low salinity of the water.
Swimming Lake Müritz
In 2017, Anke swam from Buchholz to Waren across the length of Lake Müritz. She had done this swim as a personal challenge, but wanted to do it again this year and document it this time. She reached out to the organizers of the local event, “Müritzschwimmen”, who readily agreed to help support her swim, along with her husband and son, Oskar.
When she arrived on swim day, she’d already completed three marathon swims in the preceding three weeks: the 10k, The Schlei, then the 14k. Now she would swim another 30k to complete the set of four. Luckily, conditions were favorable, with calm 20-21°C water. While she was a little nervous how her body would respond to the accumulated fatigue, she swam beautifully across the route without incident in a time of 13:47.
“The challenge of four marathon swims very close together (every weekend a swim) taught me that we are capable of so much more than we often think we are. After each swim, I only concentrated on the next one,” she said, comparing this strategy to swimming to the next feed in the English Channel. “Don’t think about all swims to come, but focus only on the next one.”
One thing that can take a newly established route to the “next level” is when someone else repeats it. I asked Anke who she would like to see swim either of these two routes next. She replied she’s already been in contact with another swimmer wanting to swim Lake Müritz. “I would be very happy if other swimmers would repeat these routes,” she said. “Everyone is welcome. Very welcome are swimmers from other countries as well. It would be very nice if Lake Müritz or the Schlei would establish as international, interesting marathon swims in a very nice nature.”
